


Her Own Device

by RisuAlto



Series: Junisce's Story [1]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Death, Druids, Gen, Guilt, Injury, Minor Character Death, On the Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21561274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisuAlto/pseuds/RisuAlto
Summary: After being blamed for a massacre that wasn't her fault, Junisce flees from the village she was meant to protect.
Series: Junisce's Story [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548025
Comments: 6
Kudos: 7





	Her Own Device

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rannadylin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rannadylin/gifts).



> This prompt was, "On the run," for the Bad Things Happen Bingo.
> 
> This takes place a few months before Junisce arrives in the Dyrwood before PoE1.

The sound of crashing through thick fern leaves had become almost like white noise, hissing like running water in Junisce’s head as she moved and blocking out everything but the thump of her feet and the beat of her heart. She had nothing—nothing but the armor she always wore and a single hunting knife strapped to her hip. No food, no bag, no tools, not even a waterskin or a scrap of rope.

_Why…?_

There had been no time.

Behind her, she could hear the clanking of wood and metal (pitchforks and clubs and makeshift shields) and the smell of smoke was becoming no more distant. Junisce was fast, and she knew the area, but she understood that her adrenaline and fear had nothing on the power of blind rage. The fury of mothers and fathers and parents whose children lay ripped to shreds in the streets, of lovers who would never see their partners again, of siblings and teachers and apprentices and _everyone_ who she had failed.

_Why did this happen?_

The cuts on her legs (bare from the mid-thigh down; her full armor was still back at the old, hollow tree she called home that was now burning) pulsed with needle-like pain, and Junisce stumbled, dropping to one knee in the dirt. The barbed edges of chokevines and of those ferns (Galawain’s teeth, they were called, and she’d never feared them before, but she’d also never been so desperate, _careless_ ) were finally taking their toll.

For a dark moment, as Junisce fought to bring air into her lungs, staring at the blood running in rivers down her legs and hands, she wondered if it would be better just to stop. To let them catch up. Where was she even going? What was waiting for her if she got away?

Somewhere in a tree above her, a bird called out. Junisce barely heard it, unable to place the call, really, but it anchored her attention back on the forest. The magic of the pure, untamed wilderness was beginning to bleed into her. Maybe it came through her wounds, or maybe it came through the part of her mind that whispered, _Galawain guide me_ , but whatever the cause, Junisce was grateful.

She’d only felt this a handful of times before. Junisce breathed deeply and held it like that would keep the magic from escaping her for just long enough to shape it as she wished. Her bones began to swell and her muscles twisted and re-twisted themselves around the new form. It should be painful, she thought, just like every time. It _should_ ache to feel her skin rearranging and bursting with thick, dark fur, to feel her heart move and her spine change shape. 

But there was no pain. Just breath. Like stretching, first thing after waking up.

A growl came from her throat as Junisce’s front paws slammed down into the earth. There was enough of her blood here that maybe, just maybe, the villagers would a bear had mauled her before they could.

That was _slightly_ more likely than Junisce becoming a bear herself, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think they were all ignorant of druidic magic. So, she ran, this time on four legs instead of two, south, as far as she could before even these large lungs began to strain for air. And then even further. The smoke and metal was far behind her now, but the smell of blood and burnt flesh and acid remained. No matter how far, how fast, how desperately Junisce ran, the massacre followed her, and not even the hum of her Spiritshift form could drown it out.

 _Why? Why?_ Why?

All at once, the magic left her, and she tumbled the rest of the way into the valley that her instincts had led her towards. The sun was low in the sky, casting everything in a haze of amber and red, red, _red_ , like the cuts on her body and the blood in the well. Junisce shut her eyes against it and screamed, a hoarse, toneless cry that shivered through every rock in the valley until finally, _finally_ , she collapsed into a fitful sleep.

The blood was still there when she came back to herself. She got up and kept running.


End file.
